April 1865: The Month That Saved America

474 Pages·2001·2.12 MB·English

by  Jay Winik

A 1865
PRIL
The Month
That Saved America
Jay Winik
D
EDICATION
For Lyric, my North and South, and East and West
C
ONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Prelude
“A Nation Delayed”
Part I March 1865
1. The Dilemma
Part 2 April 1, 1865
2. The Fall
3. The Chase—and the Decision
4. The Meeting
Part 3 April 15, 1865
5. The Unraveling
6. Will It All Come Undone?
7. Surrender
Part 4 Late Spring, 1865
8. Reconciliation
Epilogue
To Make a Nation
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
P.S. INSIGHTS, INTERVIEWS, & MORE . . .
Praise for APRIL 1865 by Jay Winik
The Peacemakers, by George P. Healy
Copyright
About the Publisher
I
NTRODUCTION
A
tlanta had been overwhelmed. Columbia had been surrendered—and burned.
Charleston had been abandoned. The peace conference at Hampton Roads had
been fruitless. And the British and the French had refused to intervene. The
Army of Northern Virginia, after striking its own harsh blows against the Union
in the six bloodiest weeks of the war, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, had
wriggled free of the enemy’s clutches and fallen back, converging in a defensive
position around Petersburg and Richmond.
Across the slim divide of the battered landscape lay Grant’s swelling Army of
the Potomac.
It was the Confederacy’s direst crisis since the start of the war, vaster than the
fall of Vicksburg, more terrible than the failure at Gettysburg, and more
traumatic than the toll of Sharpsburg. This time, the South stood irrevocably
alone. But as smoky light filtered off the James River below Richmond, a
strange emotion prevailed throughout much of the Confederacy. It was,
Southerners knew, not the first time in history that defenders had been pitifully
whittled down into pieces by attacking legions, cut in half, starved, demoralized,
enervated, and yet somehow had found the will to prevail. They still had four
armies in the field, and man for man some of the finest fighting men in all of the
history of warfare. Their guerrilla fighters and cavalry were second to none.
Their lineage, they reminded themselves, was impeccable, stretching from the
Jamestown colonists of 1607 to the Founding Fathers of 1776, and included
George Washington himself. This kindled and rekindled their dwindling resolve.
So did their prayers. And so did their own spirit—however waning.
And so fervent were they in their desire to earn their independence that after
an extensive, protracted debate, they had even held out the promise of freedom
to any black man who would fight for their cause.
Now, confronted by the dreaded prospect of losing all, they looked to their
leadership, for another George Washington, a figure who could rescue the South.
In these desperate times, after all the suffering and death, after the multitude of
exhaustion and despair, such a man—or such men—was the Confederacy’s final
chance.
In the trenches of Petersburg, there was such a man, and across the
Confederacy, there were such men. As a weary Abraham Lincoln, who had
braced the Union when the blood was thick and victory seemed lost, so deeply
feared, Robert E. Lee and the generals who looked to him for leadership, and a
good many of the Confederate citizens who looked to him for guidance, were as
aggressive as ever: not ready to give up, to give in, or to relinquish their
Confederate identity burnished in the fires of war. This war was not over. Not by
a long shot. And the implications for the peace to follow were profound.
It is the eve of April 1865.
Even today, what followed in the remaining days of the Civil War seems almost
miraculous. April 1865 is a month that could have unraveled the American
nation. Instead, it saved it. It is a month as dramatic and as devastating as any
ever faced in American history—and it proved to be perhaps the most moving
and decisive month not simply of the Civil War, but indeed, quite likely, in the
life of the United States.
Too often, it is at a small red brick house in Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9,
1865—Robert E. Lee’s fateful meeting with U. S. Grant—that the story of the
Civil War stops. Yet this is a mistake. For one thing, the war was still not over; it
could have lasted several more hard months, even years. For another, no period
was more harrowing, or had so great an impact upon this country, as the days
that followed Lee’s surrender. Within six days, Abraham Lincoln was dead, the
first-ever assassination of an American president. Never before or since in the
life of this nation has the country been so tested as in this one week alone. Nor
have so many tales of human drama and so many remarkable events—surrender
and assassination but two among them—occurred with such breathtaking
simultaneity and far-reaching consequences, within a simple span of some thirty
or so days.
Indeed, the whole of April 1865 was marked by tumult and bloodshed,
heroism and desperation, freedom and defeat, military prowess and diplomatic
magnanimity, jubilation and sorrow, and, finally, by individual and national
agony and joy. Consider a few unforgettable images: this one month witnessed
the poignant, frenzied fall of the rebel capital at Richmond and its government
on the run; Lincoln’s unprecedented walk through Richmond the next afternoon,
as the city still smoldered and burned and its newly freed blacks brushed him
with their hands; one of the most savage battles of the war, fought along Sayler’s
Creek, and the daring—and daunting—prospect of the South forming guerrilla
groups to press the conflict and bleed the North, with grave, long-term
consequences. It saw Lee’s defiant efforts to head south and reunify with
General Joe Johnston, while fervently proclaiming “we must all determine to die
at our posts”; the Army of Northern Virginia force-marching in a labored,
hurried retreat, an unduly complicated effort marked by heartbreaking mistakes,
remarkable stoicism, and near split-second decisions with cataclysmic results;
Lee’s reluctant yet dignified surrender to Grant at Appomattox, accompanied by
Grant’s equally dignified, and largely unprecedented, handling of his fallen foe,
a masterful act that set the tone for the rest of the war and the peace to come. It
glimpsed Lincoln’s eerie premonitions of death just days before his own
assassination, followed by the successful plot to kill the president and a near-
successful plot—foiled only at the last moment—to decapitate the entire Union
government, threatening the revival of more ruinous war. And while sporadic
fighting continued in the South, the Union was plunged into near chaos as the
first-ever presidential transfer of power in a crisis commenced, amid widespread
hysteria and rage, with the inauguration of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, an
illiterate until age twenty-one, who had met with Lincoln only once since the
inauguration. This one month also beheld an angry nationwide search for John
Wilkes Booth, while intensive on-again, off-again negotiations were waged over
a ten-day span to produce General Johnston’s eventual surrender to William
Tecumseh Sherman—as other rebel generals and would-be guerrillas in the Deep
South, in the backwoods, and in the Far West watched, waited, and pondered
their next steps. And, of course, it ushered in the start of the nation’s
reunification.
But even as the war climaxed to a close, there remained the most significant
question of all—one that had consumed Abraham Lincoln, haunted him, kept
him awake at night, and etched lines of worry deep in his face: not simply how
to subjugate the Confederacy by force of arms, but, more importantly, how to
reunite two separate political, social, and cultural entities that had been bitter
military enemies just days before. There is “no greater [task] before us,” Lincoln
bluntly told his cabinet, or for that matter, before “any future Cabinet.” In truth,
this was the foremost challenge of April 1865. This accomplishment—two
nations becoming one—perhaps among the most momentous of all time, makes
the story of April 1865 not just the tale of the war’s dénouement but, in countless
ways, the story of the making of our nation.
For historians, it is axiomatic that there are dates on which history turns, and that
themselves become packed with meaning. For the English, it is 1066, the
bittersweet year of the Norman conquest and the beginning of the most widely
spoken language across the globe today. For the French, there is the powerful
symbol of 1789, marking the dawn of liberty and equality, and, just as
accurately, the stunning transition between the old order and modern French
society. For Americans, one magic number is, of course, 1492, the year marking
the discovery of America—which is to say its Europeanization—or 1776, the
American Declaration of Independence. But April 1865 is another such pivotal
date.
It was not inevitable that the American Civil War would end as it did, or for
that matter, that it would end at all well. Indeed, what emerges from the
panorama of April 1865 is that the whole of our national history could have been
altered but for a few decisions, a quirk of fate, a sudden shift in luck. Throughout
this period, there were critical turning points, each of which could have shattered
a fragile, war-torn America, thrusting the new nation back into renewed war, or,
even worse, into a protracted, ugly, low-level North-South conflict, or toward a
far harsher, more violent, and volatile peace, with unpredictable results. Time
and again, things might have gone altogether differently. For instance, we are
sorely mistaken if we believe that Lee had no options after the fall of Richmond
or if we assume that his final retreat could have ended only in wholesale
capitulation. Or, as opposed to what 200 years of smooth constitutional
government may lead us to think, we would be equally mistaken if we believe
that the constitutional provisions guiding the Union cabinet—as it prepared to
hand power over to Andrew Johnson—were anything but awkward, uncertain,
and exasperatingly unclear.
In truth, one cannot understand how the nation came together without seeing
the element of choice and uncertainty, or what historians often call
“contingency,” that hung over every dramatic event in April: from the final
military battles to the diplomatic meetings, from the weighty political decisions
to the tense presidential succession, from the deep and drastic social dislocations
in the South to the raw nerves and excitement in the North. History is not a
random sequence of events, and never more so than here. In a sense, the story of
April 1865 is not just one of decisions made, but also one of decisions rejected.
Lee’s decision concerning guerrilla warfare, with immense if not unforeseen
ramifications, was one such decisive moment; Grant’s choice to be
magnanimous at Appomattox was another; and then, of course, there is the first-
ever assassination of a president, Abraham Lincoln, itself an unthinkable event.
In light of the panic and chaos that followed, crucial questions remained. Would
Southern leaders seek to take advantage of this moment of fleeting weakness? Or
find new spirit in the North’s woes? And would Northerners now flirt with
government by cabinet, as they had when John Tyler succeeded William Henry
Harrison? Or inch toward military or autocratic rule, as some, cabinet members
included, feared? Or would they impose far harsher terms upon the South and
the remaining Confederate soldiers? And finally, there are the subtle but
powerful efforts not just of Lincoln, whose wisdom and foresight shine in these
days as vividly as at any other time in his career, but also of high-ranking
military men, North and South, to resist what one historian has labeled the
“hoarse cry of vengeance,” and instead do their part in peace, to help heal the
country.
Ever since the founding of the republican experiment in 1776, the United
States was still very much a fragile entity, and each generation was fearful of its
prospects for survival. They knew that most republics throughout history had
been overthrown by revolution, or had collapsed into dictatorship or civil war, or
had succumbed to uncontrollable anarchy. The same fate, they feared, could be
theirs. And their fears were hardly unfounded; history, then and now, is littered
with bad endings. As Lincoln said, the Civil War was a time of “great testing.”
In many ways, never were the temptations or threats for an imperfect peace, or a
time of unbridled enmity, or a protracted low-grade North-South conflict, or
even the allure of dictatorship, greater than in the final month. Whatever may
have followed later, in these most crucial of days, none of this happened. How
this came about is an important, and neglected, story of America.
In the end, only after each such concatenation draws into focus does April
1865 come to be seen as not simply a crucial and coherent period of the Civil
War in its own right, but as an essential cornerstone in the events that ultimately
brought America together. To understand this is to grasp something precious: it
is to see our country anew.
This work is, of sorts, a labor of love, and a culmination of some two decades of